I'd like to compile a list of Symbiosis recommendations for publication on WoW Insider and the guide, so hit me with what you've find helpful. Don't limit yourself; suggestions for raids are great (by encounter, please) but recommendations for challenge modes or PvP would also be useful. (They don't have to be feral-only, either.) Thanks!

As far as feral goes, I've played with symbiosis quite a bit so far, much to the annoyance of my raid group. I think I have an idea of how I feel about each ability taken/given. Note that these opinions are purely for PVE. I don't PVP so I won't even begin to pretend to know how useful the abilities are for PVP.

DKs: Death coil isn't great. It's a ranged attack, I guess, which could be useful for attacking things that are not in melee range, but it uses energy that could be better spent elsewhere.They get Wild Mushroom: Plague, which I've yet to see any DK use in any kind of serious manner.Hunter: Play dead? Really? I guess it would be good if you pull threat, but that's quite a farfetched hypothetical right now.They get dash which I guess they could use, but they're already a highly mobile class, so it seems redundant.Mage: Frost nova just doesn't seem to have a lot of use in raids.They get Healing Touch, which could theoretically help their survivability, but our healers generally do a good job to keep everyone up anyway.Monk: Clash suffers from the same problems as Frost Nova in that there's just no use for it in raids.Tank and dps monks get bear hug, healers get entangling roots. Both are CCs and we just don't CC very much.Paladin: Divine shield is a nice little defensive cooldown, but I have trouble finding a place to use it. We already have barkskin and survival instincts, and those usually get me through most situations alive. If not, it's usually a wipe anyway.Healing pallies get rebirth, and that's cool but it doesn't really accomplish much since you're just moving a B-rez from one player to another. I could just as easily B-rez someone myself instead of handing the ability to a pally. The only place I could see this being useful is maybe in a 25 man that has fewer than three people who can B-rez. Tanks and dps pallies get wrath, which I'm sure they have better uses for their mana/gcd than a caster ability. I guess it's an extra ranged attack.Priest: Dispersion could prove useful if I ever find myself needing to tank a one-shot mechanic to the face, but I haven't encountered a need like that yet.Shadow priests get Tranquility, which is huge. If there's a spriest in the raid group, they're usually my first choice for symbiosis for this reason. Cyclone for healers, yawn.Rogue: Redirect makes target swapping much less painful. I think I've used this ability more than any others so far, since for fights like Stone Guards, I find myself target swapping a lot.They get Growl which not only taunts their target but makes them much more tank-y. Could save us from a wipe situation.Shaman: I love popping Feral Spirit. I don't know how much of a dps gain it is but it certainly can't hurt. It's a fairly short cooldown too.Dps shamans get solar beam which they don't seem to ever use, so I guess it might be bad. Healers get prowl, and you can guess how useful that is to them. It's not.Warlock: Soul Swap, like Redirect, helps us with target changes, but I can't really get the hang of it. It requires the previous target to still be alive, and I tend to stay on things until they're dead.They get Rejuvenation which they don't ever use.Warrior: Shattering Blow seems okay, but I haven't used it all that much since it's such a long cooldown. I could see where it would be useful, especially if the warrior and the cat chain them during a burn phase.They get stampeding shout, which the other druids in the raid group and I usually have covered every time it's needed.

The Stone Guard - Rogue. The ability to move CP from boss taunted away is great for this encounter.

Elegon - Paladin. My first 25man kill was a bit dramatic - only 3 out of 25 ppl survived. Bubble would help a lot with these kind of situations. Sure, you only do half the damage, but the whole raid's dots tick for extra 6 seconds...

Feng - Shadow Priest. He/She gets Tranquility, and you get Dispersion with only 2min cd. It helps your healers a lot on Epicenters & whatnot.

For the rest of the encounters I don't have any favourites right now, so usually I end up casting symbio on sPriest for a raid healing CD.

Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today - and it won't be you.

Im a little disappointed with it in practice. Indeed Ive found that I actually forget to cast it on anyone half the time.

We dont have a raiding Rogue at the moment and that is the only one I think Id make regular use of. I can't find much use for Lock Soul Swap, maybe I haven't got my head around that one but there are very few times Ive felt like I need to do this.

It's too bad that many choices are actually useless (expecially for the recipient), the idea was nice, but it seems that has ended up being nerfed into insignificance with very few exceptions.

I like the paladin's Divine Shield, but I've had mixed success. Yesterday on Elegon I had taken it with the idea of sitting behind the boss and ignoring the add explosions. I got one-shot (this was with a ton of debuff stacks). I tried again (with an addon clearly indicating the timer left on the divine shield) and it seems that it does not protect from the add explosion, even if the text clearly states "all damage and spells". I'll try the SP dispersion next time.BTW I'm also thinking about switching to Soul Swap for the energy charges: put up all dots on the boss, switch them to a charge as soon as it pops, then focus a different charge.

Helistar the idea of dot swapping on charges is nice, very nice tbh. It'd allow you to stay on boss for the first two(?) sparks, dots should eat them. But I don't think I can pull it off myself - I'd be too scared about messing up :/

Very nice idea nonetheless.

Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today - and it won't be you.

Not really much to say about most of them as they are pretty self explanatory for most, but a few situations where I have found them useful or think they would be useful:

Divine Shield has been a boon in 2s vs high burst comps. Dispersion is amazing, especially for clearing out cobalt bombs when the cobalt dog has barely been petrifying. Clash I could see as a good challenge mode talent as an AoE stun on a relatively short CD (35 sec), but given how many things there are to do right now in WoW I haven't had a chance to see any challenge modes yet. Redirect/Soul Swap are the obvious target switchers. The rest of the feral gains are 'meh'.

The only thing to say about what other classes gain from me: Tranq is huge for fights with heavy AoE damage phases. My warlock friend loves rejuv because it can do a crazy amount of healing and he doesn't always have to worry about mana. I want to say stampeding shout could be good for a warrior . . . but it has a TEN MINUTE cooldown. Unbelievable. And don't underestimate the DK's wild mushroom. It is incredibly helpful for them, especially where AoE is needed.

As a feral, raid 25Soul swap / Warlock on stone guards, another gain could be a rogue but i prefer warlock, less cd, and they can rejuv themselves when they take cristals (hc)Dispersion / SP for elegon (i was in the rotation to take the explosion, heroic) (their tranquility is so bad ... it's only for dispersion on specific fight)War on spirit kings to shattering blow (something like that) and another stampeding roar from warWar or DK usually (our dks love a lot these mushrooms, but are not able to quantify their dps gain)

For 25m, symbiosis on a warrior is probably best raid dps increase.For 10m, symbiosis on a shaman is probably best dps increase. From my experience, the wolves do roughly 40-50k damage total per summon (so the ability adds a whopping 400ish dps).

Utility-wise, shadowpriest tranquility is pretty awful. Also, dk mushrooms have a huge explosion radius, I think it may be very useful on elegon.

Using symbiosis on a paladin gives you a bubble which allows you to ignore (some) mechanics, especially in heroics and challenge modes. Raid mechanics tend to ignore the bubble rather than the other way around =/

In PvP, symbiosis on a monk gives you a second charge, and a mage gives you frost nova, both useful for sticking on a target.

As guardian, the best use I found for symbiosis was on a hunter so I can lay frost traps when the current pack is around 25% hp and rush off to get the next pack rounded up ready for aoe by the time the first pack is dead.

Ok so I tried Soul Swap on Elegon (for charges) and it sucks. The initial charges you don't care, since they just die, the final ones you don't have the time to put up the dots on the boss.I've gone with SP/Dispersion, which works in reducing the damage from the explosions, saving me some running around, I need to improve on it, since I should turn it on at the last second and then cancelaura, or I lose some time.

Helistar wrote:Ok so I tried Soul Swap on Elegon (for charges) and it sucks. The initial charges you don't care, since they just die, the final ones you don't have the time to put up the dots on the boss.I've gone with SP/Dispersion, which works in reducing the damage from the explosions, saving me some running around, I need to improve on it, since I should turn it on at the last second and then cancelaura, or I lose some time.

Soul Swap is very good for the P1 and P3, not so good for P2.

In P1, if you're on the boss you can Soul Swap your bleeds onto the Protector when it spawns, and since the Protectors spawn every 30 seconds you can synchronize your TF to allow you put bleeds back up on the boss very quickly after you swap your current ones off. If you're on the Protector, then it allows you to not have to worry about the mob dying with your bleeds on it as you can just swap them off to the boss while he's casting Total Annihilation.

In P3, you can swap your bleeds off to a different pillar if you're ahead of someone else on your side.

In P2, it's just not very good, because (at least in my experience) the main goal of P2 is to pump damage into the boss. The adds are just a distraction that you want to minimize your energy spent on, while assuring that they die consistantly, so that you can have maximum bleed uptime on the boss. If you're swapping your bleeds on to the adds you're really just wasting damage. The best you can do with Soul Swap in this phase is swap your Rake off of the Energy Charge onto the boss which saves you 35 energy and should allow you to not have to clip almost an entire rake before you switch to the next add.

For 10m, symbiosis on a shaman is probably best dps increase. From my experience, the wolves do roughly 40-50k damage total per summon (so the ability adds a whopping 400ish dps).

Because the ability is on a 2 minute cooldown its more like 175-200 dps.

The Stone Guard - Rogue. The ability to move CP from boss taunted away is great for this encounter.

I continue to champion for Soul Swap here for a number of reasons. By now everyone knows that Dogs are likely to be swaping more then 1 time a minute (Redirects cooldown). Having a freashly applied Rip start walking away to start doing 90% less damage sucks (worse if it was a DoC'd Rip). Also for the Heroic version of the fight why on earth would you want to throw away your buffed BitW Rip on one target and have to start Rip again from scratch when a simple swap + FB is so much better?

DKs: Death coil isn't great. It's a ranged attack, I guess, which could be useful for attacking things that are not in melee range, but it uses energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

Don't use it ever. Not only does it cost 40 energy, but I am pretty sure it would be less damage then Wrath spamming for an air phase (not using HotW).

Warlock: Soul Swap, like Redirect, helps us with target changes, but I can't really get the hang of it. It requires the previous target to still be alive, and I tend to stay on things until they're dead.

Last time I tested this if there was time left on the bleeds on the target I was able to Soul Swap to a new target even after it was dead. Also the 30 second cooldown vs the 1 minute from Redirect makes Soulswap the better choice if you have it to make.

They get Rejuvenation which they don't ever use.

Smart Warlocks do. It's a great spell for them when they want to (what ever the spell is that sucks life for mana).

Great information here. I'll have to remember to give Soul Swap a chance on target-switch fights and get better with it, and yell at our warlocks to use rejuvenation. I also need a /cancelaura macro for dispersion (wouldn't that drop cat form though?)

For 10m, symbiosis on a shaman is probably best dps increase. From my experience, the wolves do roughly 40-50k damage total per summon (so the ability adds a whopping 400ish dps).

Because the ability is on a 2 minute cooldown its more like 175-200 dps.

They get Rejuvenation which they don't ever use.

Smart Warlocks do. It's a great spell for them when they want to (what ever the spell is that sucks life for mana).

Hmm, 45k damage every 120 seconds is just about 400ish dps for me. Results may vary.

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Also, really iffy on that warlock thing. Solo/duo, sure, but speaking as an ex-main healer, when there's a healer in the party it's their job to heal the damage (sometimes taken on purpose - hi vengeance/standing in fire) so the other classes can do their jobs better. If a warlock is forced to use a gcd on rejuv in a party/raid, something is wrong in all but the most extreme of circumstances (2-healing 25man heroic ragnaros when it was current content, for example.)

In these here days of fixed Mana pools, doing anything to assist your healers in saving that mana is a good thing. There are so many movement fights this tier that spending a GCD while moving out of "The Stuff" on a HoT can only be a good idea. Now I am not very well versed in how a Warlock works past "DOT ALL THE STUFF!!!!!" so I am not sure how often a GCD is open. Even if it's as simple as macroing it to their straif keys so when they shift they get the HoT it's not a bad idea.

Remember Raids never go perfect until long after farm. Just because something goes wrong doesn't mean I should just die and blame the healer. Plus I doubt there is a healer that will go "Hey don't heal that damage, thats my damage!".

In my opinion, a warlock can fill all his gcds with casts of more importance than a weak rejuv, and unlike melee classes, ranged players simply do not have empty gcds with which they are free to use on utility spells. Warlocks have fel flame for example, instant cast direct damage nuke with no cd.

Just a couple days ago we were discussing in my guild whether a feral tranquility without hotw was worth casting during a healing intensive burn phase (say, garajal final percents) and decided against it. 700k healing over 6 seconds wasn't worth casting ... vs a rejuv that heals for 30k using a 1.5 sec gcd?

Anyway, I'm not saying that if you die you should blame the healer, because chances are that you screwed up in the first place if you died. However, if there is damage to heal, it's far more efficient for the players specced into healing to heal it and for players specced into damage to do damage instead of trying to patch themselves up.

Tinderhoof wrote:Now I am not very well versed in how a Warlock works past "DOT ALL THE STUFF!!!!!" so I am not sure how often a GCD is open.

There are no ranged classes that have any wait time in their standstill rotation, I'm not sure how that changes when you apply movement but I do know locks is one of the classes that have a spammable instant cast spell so they don't need to ever have any downtime.

I kind of have to agree with kaiadam. With how pitiful Symbiosis heals are, unless you have nothing to DPS or nothing to use to DPS for a GCD (or your healers are awful) then most of the time it's probably better just to DPS and let the healers do their job.

Don't get me wrong, when I DPS on elegon I often tweak my HT use to mitigate spike damage, but Rejuvenation is nothing like our instant 200k Healing Touch crits, especially since we have a massive amount of free GCDs.

I *completely* disagree that rejuv is worthless for a warlock. Any dps that stubbornly refuses to heal themselves at a tiny dps loss for heroic raids when you're not quite up to snuff in the gear department is not using their class the way it was meant to be played. If you're doing a fight like heroic Gara'jal where the dps check is high, sure, rely on your healer (and they shouldn't have mana problems anyway because of the mechanics). But Stone Guard, Feng, and The Spirit Kings (haven't beaten them, but we've killed 2 under 5 minutes easy) have not been very strict on the dps check and you should help your healers out so they don't feel like they have to finish a cast before moving out of the big, bad fire or so they don't have to use an expensive heal. Ever hear "I'M OOM?" Well, that could have possibly been avoided if more people used their mitigations/heals.